Starving for Sisterly Conversation | Part 2 of 3

by Elouise

The last line of the dream names my hunger:  “She seems lonely for someone to talk with about real life.”  Other parts of the dream identify behaviors I might want to leave behind, and a few unexpected personal capacities and resources.  This post focuses on my hunger, and describes how things begin falling apart.

What we sisters didn’t do back then
In Part 1 I listed examples of activities we engaged in when we lived at home.  Maybe you raised your eyebrows a few times, or experienced at least one shock of recognition.  For the most part, though, our activities were pretty normal, if not always fun.

Here’s a companion list that is anything but fun:  what we didn’t do together as sisters.  The list points to gaping holes in our virtual home-schooling curriculum.  NOT on the agenda:

  • Comforting one another, especially after we were punished, but also if we were afraid or sad about something
  • Sharing our fears or how we  felt about distressing things that happened in school or at home
  • Telling each other our dreams
  • Getting each other’s ideas and suggestions
  • Talking about what we wanted to do or be when we grew up
  • Apologizing to each other without being required to do so
  • Touching or hugging each other affectionately instead of pushing, shoving or hitting each other
  • Talking about our parents, including Mother’s health and intrusiveness, how to deal with Daddy’s harsh punishment and intrusiveness, and the way they supported each other so that we didn’t have an advocate in either of them
  • Talking about anything remotely connected to sexuality
  • Talking about boys or boyfriends

None of this happened, except for occasional comfort and affection toward our latest baby sister.  Things changed once we were no longer considered babies.  Our parents actively discouraged or banned direct, personal, private communication between us as sisters.  Too dangerous?

When I was living at home, Mother seemed ever-present:  alert, listening intently to one side of a phone conversation and probing for more information.  For example:  “What was that all about?”

After I moved away from home, Mother took offense if I talked with my sisters about things I hadn’t first shared with her.  In fact, she seemed to prefer being the bearer of news between us sisters.  Our director of communications and reporter.  She expected me to report to her any news I learned from any of my sisters.  She also withheld information from me about them–sometimes with a knowing comment so I understood she knew something but wasn’t going to tell me.

As already described in Part 1, Daddy was on the lookout for any unusual camaraderie between us.  Not simply during the day, but after we were in bed at night.  Also mentioned before—Daddy got most of his reports about us from Mother.  Through her eyes, and in her words.  That way they would be on the same page.  Their page, not ours or mine.

I grew up knowing nothing about what it takes to be a sisterly friend, much less an ally.

Things fall apart
It didn’t happen overnight.  Here’s an overview of how it played out for me.  How I began to get bits, pieces, and eventually big bites of sisterly conversation.

Mid-1980s
I get a telephone call early one morning from a sister.  She says, “I need help.”  She lives in another state.  I get in my car that weekend and drive hundreds of miles to see her.  We spend hours talking about real life.  Hers and mine.  Past and present.

What we talk about confirms and fills out what each of us carried in heavy, multi-layered loads from early childhood into our adult years.  Our conversations continue via phone and at my house.  I’m stunned and grateful.  I’m having sisterly conversations!   A first taste.  Not always easy, but real.

August 1988
I attend the first of unnumbered 12-step meetings.  I tell the group, “I need help.”  At first I go once a week, then twice a week, then three times a week.  I have a fulltime job.  I don’t miss a day of work.  At first I’m terrified I might come face to face with a student, a colleague or a church friend.

At each meeting I get more of what I need:  smiling faces that greet me at every meeting; acceptance, not judgment or a long set of impossible rules.  I drink in the experiences, strength and hope of other members.  I learn to say thank you for sharing.  I get a sponsor.  I learn to share my experience, strength and hope.  I learn to be a sponsor.  I comfort, listen, hug, make amends.  I’m learning skills for sisterly (and even brotherly) conversations!

Spring 1991
I’m in my late 40s.  I begin working with a therapist for the first time in my life.  She helps me create a genogram of my father’s prolific family of origin.  I need help from my parents for some of the details.  I already know about this grandfather’s physical violence and his rage, and that he, like my father and 2 of my father’s 6 brothers, was an ordained minister.

I see a pattern:  most first-born children in each generation are female, born into an extended family that privileges males.  I have 45 first cousins on my father’s side of the family; of these, 24 are female.  I wonder what their lives have been like.  I now have an agenda for sisterly conversations with some of my female cousins.

Fall 1991
IBS has arrived full force; depression is out of control; my HMO insurance has run out.  I need more help.  I begin working long-term with a psychotherapist.  Even with a sliding scale, it costs money.

An early assignment:  Create a collage using cut-out images and words from magazines.  Illustrate what it was like for me growing up in my home.  Images and random words convey way more than I could ever describe.  I sob as I work on it and again when I show it to my therapist.  It begins to pinpoint the kind of help I need.  It also gives me a visual aid I might use in sisterly conversations.

Fall 1992
For the first time in my life, I ask each of my three sisters whether she is willing and available to have private conversations with me about work I’m doing with a psychotherapist.  Two are both willing and available; one of them is Sister #3, Diane.

During the next several months I call each of them on the phone for direct, personal, private conversation.  I take notes and read them over and over.  What I learn strengthens and nourishes my spirit.  In her way, each becomes an ally.  We take baby steps toward each other.  More than enough to make me want more of this, even though it’s difficult to talk about.  Every now and then it’s also funny.  Not all toil and sorrow and weeping.  I’m having sisterly conversations!

Fall 1993
Diane joins my husband and me at a meeting with my parents and a pastor friend.  I break my silence of many years about my father’s harsh punishment of me.  I didn’t deserve to be shamed, humiliated and silenced.

Without all the little steps taken since the mid-1980s, I wouldn’t have been ready for this day.   I don’t have a clue what’s going to happen next, but for the first time in my life I don’t feel so alone in my family.  I feel ready for whatever might happen next.  I’m still hungry—but now I’m hungry for more.  I’m definitely not starving.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 July 2014

Part 3 preview:  what happens next and what I’m still learning about my hunger